“Thank you, Oliver. I will,” Leslie promised rather meekly. “But I really don’t expect any trouble.”
“Then don’t encourage him,” Oliver retorted, with an unusual spurt of irritation. And he seemed a good deal surprised when Leslie laughed.
Oliver and she stayed for about an hour. And when they had taken their leave, the Greeves, in the manner of families, immediately embarked on a delightful, though not unkindly, inquest on the newcomer.
Aware as she was of Reid’s particular place in things, Leslie felt rather uncomfortable for the first few minutes. But she very soon realized that she was worrying herself unduly. It would have taken much more than a gaggle of Greeves to disconcert Reid Carthay.
“She’s very good-looking,” remarked Alma, always quickest off the mark when it came to personalities.
“She’s exactly as Reid described her,” replied Morley. “You must have known her very well, Reid.”
Katherine glanced at him in idle curiosity.
“Reasonably well,” Reid agreed, but seemed otherwise disinclined to join in the discussion.
“I mean, it was clever of you to describe her right away so accurately and in so few words.”
“A very beautiful and attractive girl,” remarked Richard Greeve at that moment, in a tone which silenced all other comment. “I am just a little surprised that she took anyone so ordinary as our good Oliver.”
And, with this final and rather depressing dictum on Oliver, Richard Greeve made his exit.
Leslie looked after him with a vexed laugh. But Morley said,
“For once, I’m rather in agreement with Papa, I think. I also am a little surprised that she took Oliver. And as I said before, I don’t think she sounds—and I don’t think she is—Oliver’s cup of tea either.”
“Then perhaps this will be one of those cases when there is a slip between cup and lip,” Reid suggested lightly. “Coming into the garden for a breath of air, Leslie?”
Part of her—the responsible, conscientious part of her—very much wanted to refuse. But although she despised herself for wanting to talk things over with him, Leslie could not, for anything, have resisted the urge to hear what Reid had to say when none of the others were by.
She nodded in a casual, friendly way, and they went out together into the warm dusk.
For the first few minutes they strolled in silence, each perhaps intending that the other should start the conversation. Then he said reflectively, almost softly, “I’d forgotten how beautiful she is.”
“Forgotten!”
“Oh, only in the final, sharpest sense. I had a clear picture of her in my mind, of course. But no mental recollection ever really supplies that final glow of colour or clarity of outline. It’s like having a beautiful lamp, without the light inside.”
“Yes. I know what you mean. You’re still very much in love with her, aren’t you, Reid?”
“Lord, yes! Sometimes I wish I weren’t. But there’ll never be any other girl for me.”
“Even if you don’t get her?”
“I shall get her, Leslie.”
She held her breath for a moment and tried to steady the beating of her heart.
“Was it something that happened this evening which makes you so sure of that, Reid?”
He didn’t answer her at first, but seemed to follow his own thoughts on some rather dark path. Then his attention came back to her with a start and he said,
“What did you say? Yes, of course. Everything that happened this evening. She isn’t for him, my sweet.”
He was in his characteristic, half-mocking mood of self-confidence again. “And she knows it as well as I do. It won’t take so very much to make her think again.”
“And what about Oliver?” Leslie enquired rather flatly.
“Oliver?” Reid laughed suddenly and rather shamelessly. “Oh, he’s restive and possessive about you already. Did you see the way he looked when I kissed you?”
“Yes. I did. And you ought to have been ashamed of yourself, Reid. It was taking things too far.”
“Nonsense! Did he say so?”
“He did, as a matter of fact.”
Reid gave a shout of laughter. Triumphant laughter.
“What did I tell you? Fate unkindly mixed up the characters in this little drama, and all we have to do is unmix them. Oliver is already wishing irritably that he had the right to protect you from my attentions.”
“Reid!” She was half vexed, half amused. “That doesn’t alter the fact that he is, at this moment, very much in love with Caroline.”
“Every man is in love with Caroline when he first knows her,” Reid declared carelessly. “Even your father felt romantic stirrings when she smiled at him.”
Leslie’s reluctant laugh admitted the probable truth of that. But aloud she only said,
“That would make her rather an uncomfortable person to be married to, I should have thought.”
“Divine discomfort,” Reid countered easily. “But, allow me to say, a discomfort which I could tackle very much better than your Oliver.”
“I suppose you are right.” She glanced at Reid in the faint evening light and, seeing the brilliant, wicked smile which he gave, she thought she could well imagine that he could manage even Caroline.
“Reid,” she said almost timidly. “How—I mean, what—”
“You mean what is the next move?” he prompted her airily. “Though you are rather too nice a girl to choose your wording to sound as though you’re scheming.”
She pressed her lips together.
“Well,” she said at last, “let’s be honest before everything. What is the next move?” And she paused to pick a withered flower-head from one of the rose bushes.
“I think,” he said, pausing beside her, “that the next move is for you to become engaged to me.”
She straightened up and looked at him.
“What did you say?”
“Just exactly what you thought I said, sweetheart. And don’t tell me that you don’t know what on earth I am talking about, because of course you do.”
She was completely silent, all her protests and indignant denials dying on her lips.
“You mean,” she said slowly at last, “that the shock of seeing you apparently belonging to someone else is all that is needed to make her realize it’s you she wants?”
“I was thinking a little of Oliver too,” he replied modestly. “How do you think he will take the news of your engagement to me?”
“Oh!” For a moment she saw again Oliver’s disturbed, dissatisfied face as he warned her against allowing Reid too many liberties. “He’ll—I mean, he would just hate it.”
“A healthy bit of hate,” remarked Reid in an amused tone.
“Reid, sometimes you terrify me, with your ruthlessness about what you want and your confidence that you’re right!”
“And you,” he said, laughing a little and putting his arm round her, “are much too timid for this job. Don’t endow other people with your own delicacies and scruples. You’re sweet, and I wouldn’t change you for the world. But can’t you see that Caroline and I are much more violent, ruthless, earthy creatures than you are?”
“I wasn’t thinking of you and Caroline so much,” she said rather faintly. “I was thinking of Oliver.”
“Well, then, Oliver, I suppose, is much more your own kind. Don’t you think you ought to rescue him from Caroline?” And he laughed softly and kissed the tip of her ear.
She was completely still. So still that he drew her back lightly against him without any resistance on her part. For a few moments they were silent. Then he realized suddenly that she was crying. Not stormily, as she had wept the previous day, but quietly, with the tears slipping rather helplessly down her cheeks.
“Leslie, don’t!” He was surprised, and a good deal dismayed, and on a sudden impulse he gathered her in his arms as though she were a child. “What’s the matter, sweetheart? I didn’t mean to tease you as far as that. What�
�s wrong?”
She hid her face against his shoulder for a moment, and was understood to say that she hated herself.
“Yourself? Oh, no!” he exclaimed in amused protest. “Really, that’s terribly illogical of you. You can hate me, if you like, or Caroline, or even Oliver. But not yourself. You’re much the nicest person in this set-up.”
“Oh, I’m not!” She dried her eyes on the handkerchief he offered her, and gave a faint smile of protest. “I hardly know myself, ever since I learned that Oliver didn’t love me after all. I don’t seem to have any dignity or decency or proper standards at all. I couldn’t have believed that I’d even entertain the idea of faking an engagement with one man, to make myself more desirable to another. And yet, when you talk to me about it—”
“I know—I’m a plausible scoundrel,” he said regretfully, and smiled at her.
“No, you’re not.” To her own great astonishment, she put up her hand and just touched his cheek. “You’re bold and perhaps a bit ruthless and cruelly realistic. But I don’t think you’re a scoundrel. You honestly think you have the greater claim on Caroline, don’t you?”
“Sure.” He was watching her rather closely.
“I think I think so too.”
“Come, that’s something.”
“And I do honestly believe that, in the long run, I could probably make Oliver happier than she could. Though of course it’s terribly easy to deceive oneself over anything that matters so much.”
“Terribly. But I’m sure you’re right there,” he said, smiling.
She paused, as though unwilling to follow the line of argument further. But, characteristically, he cleared the next fence for her.
“In fact,” he said, “you agree about the probability of its being generally desirable that I should marry Caroline, and Oliver should marry you, even if we argue from the highest motives. What really worries you is the idea of our achieving that by a bit of light-hearted deception.”
“Light-hearted?” She looked at him with rather shadowed eyes, and queried the word a little reproachfully.
“Certainly. Don’t you think you could rather enjoy being engaged to me on a purely temporary basis? If we do this thing at all, we may as well enjoy it.”
“I haven’t said I will do it,” she whispered hastily.
“No.”
He did not elaborate on that, as though willing to let her make up her own mind in the final analysis. And then he was so still that she had the curious impression that he was like a bird-watcher, who feared to make the slightest movement lest he should frighten away something he thought almost within his grasp.
“Reid—how long would we have to keep it up?”
“What, darling?”
He bent his head down to hers, because her question had been so low that it was almost impossible to catch.
She repeated the words, curiously aware of a nearness which was not only physical.
“The engagement? Not very long, I imagine.”
“And then, when it had served its purpose, it could be dissolved quite easily.”
“Of course.”
“I wish I didn’t feel so mean about it. As though my one thought were to take away the girl Oliver. wants.”
“Dear heart, you won’t take her away, if she truly loves him. Remember, if Oliver is the man she wants, your being engaged to me won’t make me any the more desirable to her.”
“No, that’s true.” Leslie glanced up with a relieved smile. “It’s only a sort of test.”
“If you like to put it that way.”
She thought she did like to put it that way and, though she drew a long sigh, a much more satisfied and contented look came into her face.
He watched her, with a sort of indulgent amusement.
“Well, when do we announce the engagement?”
“Oh.” Her glance came quickly to his face again then. “We shall have to do some leading up to it, Reid. After all, I only met you yesterday.”
“Did we? Don't you think I might have swept you off your feet?”
She smiled and said, “No.” But in her heart she thought he probably was the sort who swept one off one’s feet.
“Perhaps the real argument is that I’m not the kind to be swept off my feet,” she said. “Give me a few days, Reid.”
“Whatever you say. But don’t make it too long.”
“I promise,” she said rather soberly. And they went back into the house together.
Only Morley and Katherine were still in the drawing room and, glancing round, Leslie asked absently,
“Where’s Alma?”
“Why, gone to bed, of course. Long ago.” Katherine looked at her curiously. And only then did it dawn on Leslie that she and Reid had been out in the garden a very long time, and that both her brother and sister looked a little oddly at her because of it.
“I didn’t realize it was so late,” she said, and felt a certain embarrassed annoyance that she should have put herself in that position. Then she realized that, quite unwittingly, she had planted the first interested sense of query in their minds, and she supposed she ought to be glad of it.
She went and sat by Morley, and asked him in a low voice how he was feeling, because once or twice during that harassing evening she had thought he looked more than ordinarily pale and drawn, and her anxiety returned in full force now that she saw him directly under the light.
He put down his book and smiled at her.
“Not too good. But not too awful either.”
“What about having Dr. Bendick look in tomorrow?”
“He’s going to. There’s a specialist coming down from London too.”
“Morley!” She was overwhelmed by remorseful anxiety, and her own affairs were completely forgotten. “Is there something wrong?”
“Not more so than usual. Don’t get excited.”
“But I didn’t know anything about this.”
“It was necessary. Oliver arranged it all. He told me this evening that it was all fixed.”
“You mean that you’ve been feeling lately that you’re in need of more—of different treatment? Haven’t you been as well as usual, Morley?”
“No. There’s been a slow deterioration and—”
“Oh, why didn’t you tell me, dear?” she exclaimed in a tone of loving concern.
Morley smiled at her.
“Because you girls get in a fearful flap over nothing,” he countered with brotherly candour. “Besides, we’ve none of us exactly needed something extra to worry over lately. There was nothing you could have done, Leslie, even if you’d known. Except worry and I’d rather you didn’t do that. I only told you now because you’re bound to know about the specialist tomorrow, and it might be a bit of a shock if I’d said nothing in advance. But he’s supposed to be a splendid man—Sir James Trevant—and old Bendick seems to think he might not only be able to deal with the present trouble, but even perhaps do more for me than anyone’s managed to do before. So, for heaven’s sake, look on the bright side, and don’t think that the mere arrival of a specialist means something disastrous.”
Leslie paused when she reached the top of the stairs, because she saw that the light, was still on in her mother’s room, and the idea came to her that perhaps her mother most of all would need convincing whenever she declared her new-found passion for Reid. After all, to her mother she had been frankest about her feelings for Oliver. It was going to be rather difficult to reverse all that in so short a time.
Leslie knocked on the door and, in answer to the rather subdued “Come in,” she entered.
Her mother was not in bed. She was standing by her dressing-table and, as Leslie came in, she turned upon her daughter a face which bore faint but unmistakable traces of tears.
“Why, Mother, what is it? What are you doing?” Leslie came quickly across the room. But she fetched up short before the dressing-table and, silent in her turn, she stared down at what was spread out there.
A pretty, old-fash
ioned jewel-case stood open, and half its contents were spilled out, as though an eager hand had turned them over and rejected them. There was nothing there of genuine value. Only—in that most pathetic of phrases—of sentimental value. And even as Leslie gazed down at the pretty little oddments with a suddenly tightened throat, her mother said,
“They aren’t worth much, I’m afraid not any of them. Except to me. There’s my engagement ring, of course—” She turned it nervously on her delicate hand. But Leslie broke in almost sharply because she was so moved,
“Don’t be silly. Mother dear. We haven’t reached the point of having to sell your jewellery yet. Whatever made you think of it?”
“Morley.”
“You don’t mean he said something—”
“No, of course not! But he’s very ill, you know, Leslie. Much more ill than any of us realized. I spoke to Dr. Bendick half an hour ago on the telephone, when you were out in the garden. He thinks almost certainly that Morley will need immediate and expensive treatment—possibly even an operation.”
“I didn’t know.” Nervously and absently, Leslie fingered the trinkets in her turn. “But didn’t Reid tell Father that he wanted help? That he thought—”
“Morley wouldn’t have it.”
“But of course he would! How ridiculous!”
“He’s very proud, Leslie. In the way injured people are sometimes proud. It’s as though they can’t help making more difficulties for themselves. He regards Reid as a stranger. He wouldn’t take money from a stranger.”
“But Reid isn’t that! He’s a relation—well, almost a relation.”
“Oh, no, dear.” Her mother shook her head sadly. “We all repudiated that relationship when it didn’t mean any advantage to us. Morley isn’t the one to accept it now, just because we need money. Your father will be much easier to convince than Morley.”
“It’s absurd to call Reid a stranger, Mother,” Leslie reiterated almost angrily. “He doesn’t even feel like one. He seems like one of the family.”
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